In the 3 hours the tech was working on it did he call dispatch to have them sync the card ? Additional if you aren't seeing a cablecard association, you have a bad card. My guess is the tech brought a S card which will not even be recognized by a premier.

Quote:

Originally Posted by gothaggis

I have a new TiVO Premiere and the tech failed to get it to work yesterday...was out here for 3 hours.

looks like the connection to the cable headend is fine - if i check the network setup screen, the value of 'messages' increases when i exit and come back to it.

Additionally, when I go to the DVR Diagnostic menu, it shows Signal Lock: Yes. I am asusming this means the same thing as OOB Signal Lock. Also on this page it says "CableCARD Association: None" - should that be something different?

According to that TiVO page, it seems that Con should be set to use and this page should also possibly display more information. Since it appears the DVR is communicating over OOB, TiVO suggests that the card is not activated...which goes back to probably incorrect setup of my account or something along those lines. Any other ideas?

it's an M-card for sure (says so on it), he brought 2 brand new ones, just in case one was bad (he said he hasn't seen any new bad cards in awhile..he had just come from a successful premiere setup).

Yeah, he was on the phone with activation (well, in my city they require them to text everything to save on phone charges...so stupid but at least they can verify the numbers are entered correctly). They sent the 'hit' over the line..and the people on the other end (not the tech at my house) said everything looked good on their end.

I have a new TiVO Premiere and the tech failed to get it to work yesterday...was out here for 3 hours.

So are they sending another tech out? Sounds like everything is fine with your TiVo, just the card you have never got the activation signal. Did the tech work for Comcast or was he a contractor? Contractors are very bad at leaving without finishing the job.

he worked for comcast. he was sent out because i had a bad experience the day before with a tech not showing up at all, and the local office flat out telling me a lie that he was running a bit late and had to turn around and get some m-cards because he only had 'bad' ones. 3 hours after scheduled call, still no call from comcast....

anyway, he told me to wait until monday because the good IT techs at the office won't be in until then (have the weekends off) - that the people in on the weekends don't know what they are doing half the time and don't have much experience with cable cards. he left the cable card with me and should be contacting me tomorrow. I just don't want to have to take off of work yet again.

Anyone have a number at Comcast that I can call about M Cards for my area? From what I was told Comcast does not want to "buy" Scientific Atlanta M-cards because they use Motorola. I live in an area that Comcast took over from Adelphia. I can only get S Cards of which I have 4 already for my two series 3 boxes. I am being told that I can't get an M Card becasue they "simply do not have them" and "will not be buying any" and "they don't work in your area anyway" I say BS, if an S Card works, why would an M Card not work as well??? I am about to call Comcast and tell them I am canceling my service if they don't provide me with an M card. But I don't think they will really care. If I could speak to someone at Comcast that actully knows what they are talking about I might have better luck.

Anyone have a number at Comcast that I can call about M Cards for my area? From what I was told Comcast does not want to "buy" Scientific Atlanta M-cards because they use Motorola. I live in an area that Comcast took over from Adelphia. I can only get S Cards of which I have 4 already for my two series 3 boxes. I am being told that I can't get an M Card becasue they "simply do not have them" and "will not be buying any" and "they don'
t work in yoru area anyway" I say BS, if an S Card works, why would an M Card not work as well??? I am about to call Comcast and tell them I am canceling my service if they don't provide me with an M card. But I don't think they will really care. If i could speak to someone at Comcast that actully knows what they are talking about I might have better luck.

Anyone have a number at Comcast that I can call about M Cards for my area? From what I was told Comcast does not want to "buy" Scientific Atlanta M-cards because they use Motorola. I live in an area that Comcast took over from Adelphia. I can only get S Cards of which I have 4 already for my two series 3 boxes. I am being told that I can't get an M Card becasue they "simply do not have them" and "will not be buying any" and "they don'
t work in yoru area anyway" I say BS, if an S Card works, why would an M Card not work as well??? I am about to call Comcast and tell them I am canceling my service if they don't provide me with an M card. But I don't think they will really care. If i could speak to someone at Comcast that actully knows what they are talking about I might have better luck.

I did this on Twitter a while back & it was a joke. I'll try again though.

I've contacted them via Twitter a couple of times and have been very pleased with the response I've gotten. They are trying to make things work a bit better.

We have a lot of Comcast services, so I tend to get very gripy when things don't go right. When Customer Service gives me non-answers, as they often do, I send a tweet out and really have been happy with the response.

When you tweet, do you direct it to Frank or someone in the comcast cares group or do you try just sending it out?

I currently have a Tivo Series 3 HD (working beautifully and even the install went very well) and a Series II not dual tuning well since they started the whole digital thing. That's annoying but I guess it's going to force us to upgrade this other TV to HD and change out the Tivo too *sigh*

I've contacted them via Twitter a couple of times and have been very pleased with the response I've gotten. They are trying to make things work a bit better.

We have a lot of Comcast services, so I tend to get very gripy when things don't go right. When Customer Service gives me non-answers, as they often do, I send a tweet out and really have been happy with the response.

When you tweet, do you direct it to Frank or someone in the comcast cares group or do you try just sending it out?

I currently have a Tivo Series 3 HD (working beautifully and even the install went very well) and a Series II not dual tuning well since they started the whole digital thing. That's annoying but I guess it's going to force us to upgrade this other TV to HD and change out the Tivo too *sigh*

Sent it to the general Twitter account. Was contacted by ComcastGeorge, ComcastBill & ComcastBonnie, and none of them ever gave me any help.

UPDATE: I just got an email back from Comcast City Desk [City_Desk@cable.comcast.com] asking me for account information.

I am being told that I can't get an M Card becasue they "simply do not have them" and "will not be buying any" and "they don't work in yoru area anyway" I say BS, if an S Card works, why would an M Card not work as well?

All three are valid reasons. If #1 and #2 are actually true, I don't know what you expect to gain by threatening to cancel your service. If they don't have one to give you, they're not going to give you one.

Also, it's possible that Adelphia's headend equipment can't talk to Moto's M-Cards. I don't know enough about cable equipment to know if this is true or not. You should probably search around here and over at AVS to see.

All three are valid reasons. If #1 and #2 are actually true, I don't know what you expect to gain by threatening to cancel your service. If they don't have one to give you, they're not going to give you one.

Also, it's possible that Adelphia's headend equipment can't talk to Moto's M-Cards. I don't know enough about cable equipment to know if this is true or not. You should probably search around here and over at AVS to see.

Well, the FCC will tell you that they HAVE to provide the M-Card. I pay Comcast enough money each month for them to do whatever it takes to retain me as a customer.

Now, if they do that remains to be seen.

I understand that the Motorola M-Card will not work due to head-end compatibility, but Scientific Atlanta does make M-Cards and Comcast SHOULD provide them to customers that need them.

The FCC does require cable companies to provide both S & M-Cards if that is what the customer requires to use the equipment they choose.

You stated you have 2 S-Cards in your TiVos now, so your equipment does not require M-Cards, so they are not required to provide them.
I don't think this is something the retentions department can help with. They pretty much only do billing.

I just had a comcast installer here for an M-card install for my new Premiere. He had a Motorola M card. He had some communication problems with the office and finally got someone who knew what he was doing (supposedly). The installer left after an hour and 2 hours later, the card still did not have the channel line-up downloaded. I called him and he will return tomorrow with 2 cards and will try the install again. I live in Fall River, MA. Is there a problem with the Motorola card being compatible with TIVO.

Nope, it should work fine, as myself and hundreds (thousands?) of others use Moto M-Cards with their TiVo DVRs.

Was your TiVo able to tune to all of the channels you pay for? If so, then the card is working fine and you probably don't have the correct lineup selected on the TiVo. TiVo Central --> Messages and Settings --> Settings --> Channels --> Channel List. If that's not your lineup, press Enter. It might not be a bad idea to run through this again (if you're receiving channels correctly) because it will force the TiVo to load the most current lineup and guide information.

I just had a comcast installer here for an M-card install for my new Premiere. He had a Motorola M card. He had some communication problems with the office and finally got someone who knew what he was doing (supposedly). The installer left after an hour and 2 hours later, the card still did not have the channel line-up downloaded. I called him and he will return tomorrow with 2 cards and will try the install again. I live in Fall River, MA. Is there a problem with the Motorola card being compatible with TIVO.

If he was an experienced INSTALLER he would have come with more
than one M-Card - the M-Cards are better than the old S-card but not
by that much.

If you read the manual and TiVo website instructions, you should have
your TiVo up and running days ahead of any Cable Card Install.

Are you saying if I put in an m card into my TiVo, look at the host I'd, then remove it and put it back in again, there will be a new host Id?

Shouldn't be; that defeats the purpose of having a Host ID. Like a MAC address, Host IDs should be unique to each device.

That definitely was not the case for me. I popped the card in and out and the Host ID never changed. Would've been nice if it did since that Host ID was assigned to someone else's account, which prevented me from activating my card.

Are you saying if I put in an m card into my TiVo, look at the host I'd, then remove it and put it back in again, there will be a new host Id?

That's what he's saying, yes. There is some convo about it a bit earlier in the thread and the observations about it were surprising to many of us, but quite clear.

Now, in the case of my TivoHD, I have removed S-Cards and put them back without prompting a Host ID change. But when I did the removal, I got a warning message asking if the removal was intentional, and I put the card right back into its original slot without clearing the warning. Maybe that explains the diff between my experience and b_scott's. Either that or this issue is unique to M-Cards.

__________________
I have a TivoHD with 1TB of storage. Don't make me use it.

since that Host ID was assigned to someone else's account, which prevented me from activating my card.

In THEORY the HOST ID should never come up on some other account.
It is suppose to be UNIQUE. It is made that way so you CAN NOT
take an activated CableCard out of one box and stick it in another box
and have the account work in that other box.

However - Typo's HAPPEN all the time - that is the biggest problem
MSO's have in getting CableCards to work correctly.

In THEORY the HOST ID should never come up on some other account. It is suppose to be UNIQUE. It is made that way so you CAN NOT take an activated CableCard out of one box and stick it in another box and have the account work in that other box.

However - Typo's HAPPEN all the time - that is the biggest problem MSO's have in getting CableCards to work correctly.

found out my problem (thanks to TiVO support) - turns out since my cablecard shows Con:No on the Conditional Access menu, it means the card isn't activated at the head end. When I told the comcast tech that came out tonight (4th tech in 3 days) he knew exactly what that meant and they are contacting the headend tomorrow to activate it. crazy stuff.

Are you saying if I put in an m card into my TiVo, look at the host I'd, then remove it and put it back in again, there will be a new host Id?

only if you have an HD or S3, and put it in another slot. Each time it gets put into a new slot, it changes. Then put it back in the first slot and it'll be different. Once I had to do that because the ID was already taken.